Noob

for me it's only on paper, but the entirety of why i picked summoner was overwhelming offense and by far the strongest mixups with the htbs and vortex.

edit: made it a spoiler since it's an irrelevant tl;dr for most people, i'd assume. just thought i'd explain for whomever was asking me.

i think zoning sucks in general in this game, and i think NRS zoning lacks fundamentals that make it the potential deep mental battle that exists in strong 2d fighters (particularly projectiles cancelling out hits on each other and typical reflect/absorb properties.) also the existence of moves that can completely circumvent the zoning situation on-reaction (the worst) or reads (less bad, but still not great design) at low cost, especially in such a pressure-heavy game, skews the power balance of a zoning strategy vs. a mixup/pressure strategy.

this is largely because of the inherent design itself not allowing the zoner elements of counterplay to a lot of the approaches, aside from 'not doing it' in the first place. for instance sub-zero's slide/ex slide, it can on-reaction go through a lot of shit and completely negate a lot of a zoner's tools from a distance.

there're no roman cancels or fadcs here for a zoner to throw a projectile, predict the opponent slide on-reaction, and then punish it with a meaty low poke (or similar counterplay options,) and so instead we end up with a zoning game where these things simply just cannot be used or they'll be straight up beat, which favors the aggressor because it's easier to close a gap while both people are hesitating to throw out unsafe moves, which in the end is in the advantage of whoever is stronger up-close, which is by design not the zoner.

in general i really dislike the design of zoning in this game and i find it's usually either too strong in a bad (read: fraudulent) way, or it's too weak to be reliable.

so, of course i wouldn't like a change that changes him into a focus i dislike. the warlock vortex along with portal kick and alleged armor makes him seem far superior, especially since i don't think the zoning will be much weaker than summoners at harrassing (only lower damage from the zoning itself,) but with a much stronger up-close defense and mixup game.

i also think sorc can contend with summoner as i think sorc might have the stronger setplay with runes, and i think fullscreen armor/meter rune arguably makes him the strongest zoner as he can reliably trade/counterzone at fullscreen. i think that strength seems stronger as a reliable gameplan than simply getting more damage off zoning, but admittedly all of this is on-paper, and i'm sure i disgust most of the loyalists here with how easily i discard him, but this is just how i feel!

edit: thought a bit more about it but summoners corner game might still be stronger than sorcerer as i assume he'll still have the 141 hard knockdown htbs into damage which should be loopable, right? depending on how good his damage is he might still be okay with strong corner carry and mid/fullscreen unbreakables (are they still unbreakable or have there been some change?)

Your hole is mine!

Actually I've just thought, his zoning took a little hit with ExSkull losing some of its advantage.

If it still frame traps into skull full screen then he'll be fine, well he'll be fine anyway don't get me wrong, the move may just have a lot less utility now. Pre patch ExSkull was the best projectile in the game, maybe even one of the best moves full stop.

NEW PSN: ArnKratos

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Burning down in flames for kicks

Hello everyone! I am ArnKratos, the best quan in CIS, and I am looking for good and strong sorcerer player in EU. If there is no quan players I need a East Quan sorcerer player but with videos of gameplays.

Noob

actually, having played a fair bit now, i've changed my opinion and i agree more with you guys. warlock is useless, and summoner is better than i thought. summoner zoning in general is actually stronger than i would've expected on paper, so i'll have to rescind my earlier statement saying there's no point to go summoner over the others.

with that said, though, i personally prefer sorcerer, and i still don't really find summoner that strong outside of some matchups. i even prefer sorcerer for zoning/counterzoning over summoner, because if i hit a fullscreen rune, the armor portal generally feels like it gives me way more momentum and counterzoning strength than just bat summon does (for instance, against an ermac, even if i get a bat summon after full screen kd, when i send back/do another special, if i don't hold block, i can easily get tagged by a random teleport. whereas the armor spell prevents those concerns and you don't have to hesitate so much with the zoning itself.)

i also think dark magic is pretty good as i feel the game itself seems a lot more meter-dependent.

the only downside to sorcerer now is the fact that hex seems to have no practical applications at all anymore, which is very weird to me. like, can anyone tell me what's the point of the move now?

edit: one solution i could think of would be to make hex add additional blockstun so he could jail like previously, without affecting him outside of hex.